Iratus Strategy Guide: From Beginner to Eternal Harvest

1. Game Overview

In Iratus: Lord of the Dead, you play as Iratus, a necromancer newly freed from his tomb, who raises and commands an army of undead to claw his way back to the surface. You gather body parts from vanquished foes to craft increasingly powerful minions, then lead them into side-view, turn-based battles where you exploit enemy vulnerabilities and inflict both physical and mental damage. Between fights you develop your lair and invest in rituals and upgrades to enhance your forces. The game demands strategic thinking, resource management, and careful planning to ensure your undead army overcomes humanity’s defenders.

• Developer: Unfrozen
• Publisher: Daedalic Entertainment
• Release Date: July 24, 2019 (Early Access)
• Platforms: Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux
• Genre: Tactical, Strategy RPG with roguelike elements
• Core Loop: Defeat enemies → collect body parts → craft and upgrade undead minions → engage in turn-based battles → earn resources & unlock new units → repeat.

Heads-Up: Some bosses drop unique parts or items only on higher difficulties, so revisit them later to fill gaps.

2. Core Facts Table (Quick Reference)

System	What It Does	Player Impact
Iratus Talent Tree	Unlocks global spells, Graveyard bonuses, part economy and distillation effects	Drives long‑term progression and defines viable metas on higher difficulties
Minion Assembly	Combine heads, torsos, arms, legs to create minions with stats and skills	Part rarity and combos determine roles (tank, stress, damage, utility)
Sanity / Stress	Mental damage axis that applies debuffs and can trigger instant death or fleeing at zero	Stress pressure is a primary win condition against many enemies
Graveyard Buildings	Mortuary, Alchemy, Workshop, Library provide healing, crafting, distillation and research	Upgrades reduce rebuilds, increase part yields and unlock advanced options
Difficulty Modes	Modes unlock through progression (Cakewalk, More Pain, etc.) and change enemy toughness and resource scarcity	Higher modes require specialized Graveyard builds and talent choices

Quick Reminder: Always check your equipment before a mission. Minion and Iratus gear often provide crucial stat boosts.

3. Minions, Parts, and Assembly

Minions are assembled from four dropped parts (e.g. weapon, flesh, bones, armor) plus a brain (auxiliary) for leveling. Each part contributes base stats, passive bonuses, and access to certain skills or traits; rarer parts boost effectiveness later in a run. Between these, the UI can auto-assign the best available parts, though you should override when you need a specific role or want to conserve rare parts for high-value builds.

1. Part tiers: range from Common → Uncommon → Rare → Epic → Legendary, affecting HP, damage, bonuses, and skill potential. Saving top-tier parts for long-lived or pivotal minions is often wise.
2. Role composition: typically mixes stress dealers (e.g. Banshee, Bride), tanks (Ghoul, Bone Golem), single-target damage (Lich variants, Fallen Dhampir), and utility/support (Shade, Necromancer, Lost Soul) depending on enemy composition and encounter demands.
3. Part-swap talent (Alchemy talent “Amateur Surgeon” or “Surgical Practice”): enables you to swap parts in existing minions post-creation, helping preserve rare parts, e.g. level a minion cheaply then replace parts later with epics

Practical Tip: Don’t double up on minion types. Diversify roles to avoid wasted potential and position conflicts.

4. Graveyard Buildings and Progression

The Graveyard includes structures like the Mortuary (heals minions’ Vigor after battle), Library (assigned minions grant Iratus experience), Excavation (assigned minions explore and find body parts), Obelisk (generates Diggers’ Souls), Dead Lake (chance to find artifacts) , Arena (trains minions for extra XP), Iratus Statue (assigned minions generate mana) and Chamber of Iratus (hub for minion assembly, talent selection, alchemy). Upgrading the Mortuary lets minions fully restore Vigor after victories (though the heal amount drops on higher difficulties). Investments in Excavation (or analogous mechanics) improve part yield over time, and higher tiers in Library accelerate talent progression via more Iratus XP.

Priority: Mortuary first (for better healing), then Excavation/Obelisk (for parts and souls), next Library for talent and XP access, and build or upgrade other utility buildings (Arena, Dead Lake, Statue) as your resource needs dictate.

Talents that increase part drops, Diggers’ Souls, or yield from excavation/distillation provide compounding benefits across runs and become especially valuable on higher difficulties.

Resource Note: Leave rare parts unused until you can safely assign them to veteran minions. You’ll regret early mistakes.

5. Combat Systems (Sanity, Stances, Armor)

Combat in Iratus is turn-based and positionally sensitive. Stances restrict or enhance skill options and shift defense dynamics, so timing stance changes relative to turn order is key. Armor absorbs physical damage until it is stripped away (often via armor-breaking or penetrative skills). Sanity (stress) is a separate damage axis, so draining it can lead to panic, stun, or insanity effects (including fleeing or self-damage) once it’s depleted. Many foes are more vulnerable to stress than to raw physical damage, which elevates the importance of stress dealers in many matchups.

1. Stances: Defensive or resist stances boost survivability but may lock you out of offensive abilities, so shift stances strategically and keep an eye on initiative.
2. Armor interactions: Always soften or strip armor first, then hit with heavy physical damage to ensure full effect.
3. Stress tactics: Push sanity damage methodically, if you overdo it too fast, adverse effects (like fleeing or buffs via Inspiration) may backfire. Steady pressure often ends fights more reliably than brute force.

Quest Tip: In the Mines, focus first on defeating Keymasters and Doomsayers because they tend to lock down your progression.

6. Alchemy, Crafting, Distillation

Alchemy crafts consumables and enables transmutation. Distillation and calcination upgrades let you convert materials into higher‑tier parts or refresh mana to power Iratus abilities. Investing in distillation early improves part economy and is recommended for sustained progression on harder difficulties.

1. Consumable priorities: Heals, antidotes and status cures are high value for boss windows with specific debuffs.
2. Distillation strategy: Use distillation to increase part yields before committing epic parts to critical minions.
3. Craft sparingly: Save rare reagents for boss runs or for replacing a veteran minion lost during a run.

Survival Tip: Start fights even with wounded minions if you can act quickly because timing often matters more than full health

7. Bosses, Patterns, and Difficulty Modes

Boss encounters are multi-phase with scripted mechanics (e.g. summoning minions, changing resistances, positioning quirks) that force you to respond adaptively rather than brute forcing through. Many of the best counters include armor-break or penetrative attacks, stress (sanity) pressure, stuns, and careful positioning of your units to avoid being disrupted. Difficulty modes such as Cakewalk and More Pain unlock as you complete earlier milestones, and at higher settings enemies gain stronger stats, more aggression, and tighter resource constraints. This makes specialized Graveyard builds, optimized talent investments, and precise planning essential.

1. Preparation: stock up on consumables, ensure your minion roster includes armor-breakers and stress dealers, and consider performing distillation or crafting in advance to secure key items before a boss fight.
2. Mechanic reading: observe boss tells, adapt your roster and tactics per fight, and avoid relying exclusively on one fixed composition across all boss encounters.

Pro Tip: Center your run around one damage axis (stress or vigor). Specializing gives more consistent results than juggling both.

8. Beginner Roadmap and Advanced Strategies

Beginner Roadmap (First 8–10 Runs)

1. Finish the in-game tutorial and early missions to unlock Cakewalk and understand fundamentals like minion assembly, graveyard buildings, and Iratus’s spells.
2. Upgrade the Mortuary early to improve vigor restoration between fights and reduce the need to fully rebuild your roster.
3. Build a balanced starter team, i.e. include a stress dealer (Banshee, Bride, or Wraith), a tank (Ghoul or Skeleton), a damage dealer, and a utility/support unit.
4. Spend early talent points on perks that boost part/brain drop rates (e.g. Amateur Surgeon, Surgical Practice) and increase distillation or vigor restoration efficiency (e.g. Advanced Doctorate) for compounding benefits.
5. Use Alchemy and crafting sparingly: avoid consuming epic parts on disposable minions. Unlock the part-swap talent (Amateur Surgeon → Surgical Practice) before making big investments so you can reassign parts later.

Advanced Strategies

1. Synergize Iratus’s Spells with Your Party Role Gaps
   Don’t treat Iratus’s spellcasting as mere bonus damage and use it to patch weak spots in your roster. Build Iratus’s talents and spell selection so it augments your minions’ weaknesses rather than duplicating strengths.
2. Pick One Dominant Damage Type per Run
   Rather than juggling both stress and vigor damage, specialize in one path and build your minions, talents, and items around it. This tight focus yields stronger scaling and more consistent performance.
3. Don’t Overload with Redundant Minion Types
   Avoid doubling up on identical minion roles. Instead, aim for complementary lineups.
4. Use Self-Healing and Sustain Units to Stretch Resource Efficiency
   Minions like Bone Golem, Ghoul, and Vampire with healing or self-sustain traits reduce pressure on your graveyard healing and consumables. This frees up resources for upgrades, parts, or daring gambits in tougher fights.
5. Adapt Team Composition Per Difficulty or Dungeon Tier
   What works on early floors or easier modes won’t always cut it later. Also, boss fights with special mechanics (summons, elemental resistance) may demand temporary substitutions or role pivots.
6. Invest in Talent Lines that Compound Over Multiple Runs
   Early talents that boost drop rates, distillation efficiency, or graveyard yields pay off in the long term. These upgrades snowball across successive runs, setting you up for success in harder modes.
7. Manage Risk: Don’t “All-In” Without Fallbacks
   Against bosses or elite encounters, resist pushing too far with reckless strategy. Use positioning, stuns, and mitigation first. Save consumables, maintain escape margins in health or vigor, and avoid pinning your run on a single gamble.

Conclusion

By following this guide, you now understand how to build a strong foundation in Iratus and elevate your performance into the late game. From crafting the right minion roster, prioritizing upgrades, and mastering stress-versus-physical damage dynamics, to optimizing your Graveyard, talent choices, and boss strategies, these systems tie together into a powerful whole. In higher difficulty modes you’ll lean on part preservation, flexible team adaptation, and strategic talent investments to survive tighter resource margins. Use this knowledge as your backbone, stay observant in each fight, and gradually refine your style, before long, your undead legions will march undefeated!